TSDS is a company that specializes in making decals and details for Science Fiction subjects such as Irwin Allen TV shows, Lost in Space, etc. I was given the opportunity to try out a set of their water slide decals for the “ Invaders’ UFO”, one of my all time favorite TV shows from the 1960s. I quickly went looking through my stash to see where I had put it. This is an old kit and hasn’t been re-released by anyone yet and to find that someone put out an improvement for it is just great. The idea to these sets is to make the model look a lot better and more detailed than you would ever be able to do with dry brushing and painting the details.

When I opened the package, I got all excited with the detail of these decals. I read over the instructions, and it explains that these decals are thin and if you need to put them over a dark background, you will need to paint the area with white paint. This wouldn’t be a problem on this kit because the interior is supposed to be painted white anyway. Also the sheet is one giant decal, so they will all need to be cut out and trimmed close so that there is no excess carrier film.

Before I used the decals I had to prep all of the areas that I was going to replace with the decals. I needed to sand off some of the raised detail so that the decals would lay flat and I also had to do a little bit of fill for a few mold marks and pockets. After everything was ready, I started in on the decaling process. It may seem a little tedious having to trim each individual decal, but after I got the first one in place I was really happy with the way that it looked. When you get this kind of result, you really don’t care about the extra time. The only thing I used to apply these decals was water and they went down nicely. I was hesitant to use any solvent, as these decals are very, very thin!

I very highly recommend the TSDS decals. They went on great and the finished kit looks better than you can do on your own without them. I’m really happy to see someone thinking of these classic Sci Fi kits. I went to their web site and I’m planning on getting some more. Thanks to TSDS and IPMS USA for the opportunity to use such a fine product.